[ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:59 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:30 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 8:02 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> > For example, is it known that it is impossible to do computation where all the substrate is gas and plasma, or is it theoretically possible to have computers inside a star operating at stellar temperatures?  In the latter case, how many uploads could our sun support?  What about a typical white dwarf, or a typical red supergiant?
>>
>> Robert Forward wrote a story about sententents living on the surface
>> of a neutron star.
>
> I've read such a story.  I forget the author, but it could be the same story you're thinking of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg
>>
>> But I doubt computers are possible at high temperatures.  They need
>> stable states and the hotter you get, the harder it is to find stable
>> states.
>
> What about self-stable toroidal plasma (no need of external magnets, but manipulating the plasma structures to perform operations), or using the magnetic fields already present to control electron and.or plasma (and thus information) flow?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

Landauer's principle states that the minimum energy needed to erase
one bit of information is proportional to the temperature at which the
system is operating. Specifically, the energy needed for this
computational task is given by

E ≥ k B T ln ⁡ 2 ,

where k B is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature in
Kelvin.[2] At room temperature, the Landauer limit represents an
energy of approximately 0.018 eV (2.9×10−21 J). As of 2012, modern
computers use about a billion times as much energy per
operation.[3][4]

Keith


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